Movies.

Rohmer's Intelligent `Autumn Tale' Looks At Middle Age Lucidly

August 20, 1999|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.

Sometimes what seems to be a small change can signal something momentous.

Eric Rohmer's "Autumn Tale" is a bewitchingly intelligent and lucid portrait of love in the countryside, a French romantic comedy about friendship, weddings and matchmaking gone awry. The film -- shot with a minimal budget in real settings -- is made with the luminous precision, wit and deep psychological perception that have been Rohmer's lifelong trademarks. It's also the latest work of a cinema giant, last episode in the third great film cycle of Rohmer's career ("Tales of the Four Seasons").

Still, I suspect it will seem a minor work to some audiences (particularly those unfamiliar with Rohmer's previous work): pleasant but trivial or unambitious. It's not.

Set in the Cote du Rhone wine making region of southern France, it's about a 45-year-old vintner/widow named Magali (Beatrice Romand), whose two best friends (Marie Riviere and Alexia Portal) try, inexpertly, to find her a man. It's also a movie in which this 79-year-old master does something, for him, nearly unprecedented. After a lifetime of focusing on the young, Rohmer here shifts his concerns and camera to middle age. The resulting work assumes an undercurrent of poignancy, a delicate balance and a play between joy and sorrow, that Rohmer has reached only a few times in his career -- notably in his magnificent 1986 "Summer" (a.k.a. "The Green Ray"). Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, "Summer" starred the same lead actresses as "Autumn Tale," Riviere and Romand.

These superbly gifted and photogenic veterans -- the wide-eyed brunet Romand and the tall, elegant blond Riviere -- play lifelong chums of different temperaments. Isabelle is a happily married, extroverted Parisian; Magali a lonely and shy provincial widow. Trying to find Magali a date for her daughter's wedding reception, Isabelle advertises in a singles column (pretending to be the actual prospect), and finds a likable, bright candidate: salesman Gerald (Alain Libolt).

Unhappily, Magali's other great confidante, her son Leo's girlfriend Rosine (Portal), also wants to matchmake -- between Magali and her own former lover Etienne (Didier Sandre), a well-regarded but self-absorbed middle-age college professor, who is not yet over Rosine and is chary of the whole conspiracy. When all these people, including mopey Leo (Stephane Darmon), finally start interacting at the wedding reception, on a sunny day with light jazz wafting around the lawns, emotions are raw and misunderstandings rife.

Ever since he won world fame with 1969's "My Night at Maud's," Rohmer has always been notable for his worldly dialogue and brilliantly observed characters, but his persistent focus on the young has made his universe seem a little hermetic and enclosed. Here, he opens up his world, focusing on exactly the sort of characters usually ignored in films like this: two middle-age women.

In a way, Romand and Riviere have been among Rohmer's touchstones, revisiting fairly frequently a director famous for hiring his actresses only once, in their youth. Romand appeared for him first in the 1970 classic "Claire's Knee" as Claire's neglected friend Laura. Riviere made her debut in 1978's "Perceval."

So when they reappear here, as lifelong best friends, longtime Rohmer admirers will accept it immediately -- perhaps feeling a twinge at witnessing the personal and splendid autumns of two actresses we first met on screen as lovely young girls. Here they reward him, and us, munificently.

I loved "Autumn Tale," a film that should gratify any audience starved for intelligent dialogue, realistic portrayals of romance and lovely, non-cliched, open-air photography. Rohmer's four "Seasonal Tales" -- coming after his earlier six-film cycles, "The Moral Tales" (1963-72) and "Comedies and Proverbs" (1980-85) -- have all had this wonderfully self-assured quality, full of life, wit and sympathy. Coming at the millennium's end, "Autumn Tale" seems a perfect capstone for this last series -- and the rest of his work as well. But Rohmer has assured us this is no goodbye; we can eagerly await his next.

``AUTUMN TALE''

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Directed and written by Eric Rohmer; photographed by Diane Baratier; edited by Mary Stephen; words and music by Claude Marti, Gerard Pansanel, Pierre Peyras, Antonello Salis; produced by Francoise Etchegary, Margaret Menegoz. An October Films release; opens Friday at The Music Box Theatre. Running time: 1:52. MPAA rating: PG.